Seattle among hottest house flipping markets, but trending down

Seattle is one of the hottest markets in the country for flipping homes, an analysis released Thursday finds. But the region is trending down for home flipping.

Property database ATTOM says 207,088 single-family homes and condos nationwide were flipped in 2017. That was nearly six percent of all single-family homes and condos sold last year. It was the second straight year that number was over 200,000.

Among 52 markets analyzed with at least 1 million people, Seattle ranked No. 5 when it comes to the highest percentage of completed flips with financing in 2017.

Denver: 55.4 percent

Boston: 52.8 percent

Providence, RI: 49.4 percent

San Diego: 48.5 percent

Seattle: 48 percent

But Seattle is one of the markets that trended down when it comes to home flips in 2017. The rate of flips decreased two percent, according to ATTOM. At least one economist thinks that trend will continue.

“I believe the drop in Seattle home flipping can be attributed to the large number of buyers that home flippers are competing against in the market,” Matthew Gardner, chief economist with Windermere Real Estate, said in a press release from ATTOM. “As a result, they’re being forced to pay more which cuts deeply into potential profits — also down from last year. I anticipate that supply limitations, in concert with rising home prices, will continue to put downward pressure on the number of flips in the Seattle market in 2018.”